There is a significant body of prior art suggesting basic chair structures that can be manipulated to achieve some other function such as a lounging chaise. The following is a list of art that exemplifies the collection.
The O'Herron, U.S. Pat. No. 3,099,477, which issued on Jul. 30, 1963, shows a pair of parallel, spaced ellipsoid tubes that form the legs and arm rests for a chair seat and back. The chair can be flipped over to its FIG. 10 position when the chair back forms a child's slide.
The Austrian Patentschrift No. 38,223 has similar spaced parallel ellipsoid chair sides that can be flipped over to convert the device from a rocking chair to a stationary chair in FIG. 2. However, it requires movable parts to achieve its lounging mode and cannot be used for back tanning.
The True, U.S. Pat. No. 191,733, issued on Jun. 5, 1977, shows a convertible chair that also requires moving parts to effect the lounge mode shown in FIG. 4.
The Knight, U.S. Pat. No. 4,164,356, issued on Aug. 14, 1979, is typical of chairs that pivot up about 90 degrees to reverse the head and leg portions of the chair. This technique limits the significance of mode change from one position to another. That is, the modes are too similar to one another.
A chair convertible to an easy chair is shown in the Martinez, U.S. Pat. No. 4,580,834, issued on Apr. 8, 1986. The chair back and the rear legs form an arcuate easy chair when the upright chair is rotated about 90 degrees. This design will not work in an inverted supine body position.
Also, many of these prior convertible chairs cannot be stacked, which is a requirement for crowded resort pool areas.
It is a primary object of the present invention to ameliorate the problems discussed above in the prior art and to provide an improved compact pool or beach chair that converts to an inverted supine body rest when rotated about 150 degrees.